thesis_Daniela Noethen_print final - Jacobs University

Intergenerational Knowledge Transfer in Work Teams: A Multilevel Social Network Perspective
for job-relevant experience and knowledge. Introducing difference in team tenure into our
model produced a significant effect, while at the same time it reduced the effect of age
difference, so that the latter was no longer significant. Thus, we can assume that other factors,
such as generativity, are of minor importance. Considering the problem of loss of knowledge,
this is good news, as it is exactly the knowledgeable older employees that you want to engage
in intergenerational knowledge transfer. However, the effects are rather small (the addition of
the age-related effects in Model 2 only increased the amount of overall explained variance by
approximately 1.5%), suggesting that increased intergenerational knowledge transfer does
occur “naturally,” but only to a small extent.
Individual age does not seem to play such an important role once the age difference in
dyads is controlled for. The hypothesized age effect, which we suggested on the basis of agerelated
changes in organizational behaviors (Bowen et al., 2010), was not supported. But
possibly the failure to show an age effect, and especially an age effect independent of
experience, was due to the age distribution within the sample; with a mean age of 48 years
and only 4.8% of the sample younger than 30 years, but 64.4% over 45 years old, there might
be less variation in factors such as interpersonal concern or OCB. Thus, the sample structure
could have decreased the chances to find a larger age effect, and more specifically, an age
effect independent of experience.
With the investigation of experience as a possible conveying mechanism, we could
demonstrate that large parts of the dyad and individual level age effects, respectively, are due
to experience and experience asymmetry between older and younger employees, respectively.
Although team tenure only had a significant effect at the dyadic level, it showed a similar
pattern of effects at the dyadic and individual level. At the dyadic level, the difference in team
tenure had a significant influence on knowledge transfer and reduced the influence of age
difference to a non-significant amount. Similarly, team tenure at the individual level had an
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